Secret Advice for Success in Life: Get More Sleep, Have More Dreams

In this short-but-sweet TED talk, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington talks about how she discovered the importance of sleep: by fainting from exhaustion a couple of years ago, hitting her face on her desk, breaking her cheekbone, and needing a bunch of stitches. She also talks about the insidious idea in our culture that being sleep-deprived is a kind of status symbol -- as if people who get seven or eight hours of sleep a night have lives that are emptier or less important or less connected than those who get four or five. Getting more sleep, she argues, helps you get a grip on the big picture, and improves your mental health, to boot.

To hear another, totally different, case for the importance of sleep, check out this edition of RadioLab, all about dreams, and the importance of dreaming, and how dreaming helps the mind work out the problems of your life in ways you could never do while awake.

Netflix might know your TV habits better than you do. Recently, the entertainment company's normally tight-lipped number-crunchers looked at user data collected between November 1, 2016 and November 1, 2017 to see which series people were powering through and which ones they were digesting more slowly. By analyzing members’ average daily viewing habits, they were able to determine which programs were more likely to be “binged” (or watched for more than two hours per day) and which were more often “savored” (or watched for less than two hours per day) by viewers.

They found that the highest number of Netflix bingers glutted themselves on the true crime parody American Vandal, followed by the Brazilian sci-fi series 3%, and the drama-mystery 13 Reasons Why. Other shows that had viewers glued to the couch in 2017 included Anne with an E, the Canadian series based on L. M. Montgomery's 1908 novelAnne of Green Gables, and the live-action Archie comics-inspired Riverdale.

In contrast, TV shows that viewers enjoyed more slowly included the Emmy-winning drama The Crown, followed by Big Mouth, Neo Yokio, A Series of Unfortunate Events, GLOW, Friends from College, and Ozark.

There's a dark side to this data, though: While the company isn't around to judge your sweatpants and the chip crumbs stuck to your couch, Netflix is privy to even your most embarrassing viewing habits. The company recently used this info to publicly call out a small group of users who turned their binges into full-fledged benders:

To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?

Oh, and if you're the one person in Antarctica binging Shameless, the streaming giant just outed you, too.

Netflix broke down their full findings in the infographic below and, Big Brother vibes aside, the data is pretty fascinating. It even includes survey data on which shows prompted viewers to “Netflix cheat” on their significant others and which shows were enjoyed by the entire family.